Software products are becoming increasingly large and frequently larger than the capacity of a single computer readable medium such as a magnetic or optical disk. As a result, such software products do not fit onto a single medium. In the past, when a copy of such a software product was needed, the product was split into two or more pieces wherein each piece was equal to or less than the capacity of the medium. The content of each piece was arbitrarily selected. Each piece was then copied onto a separate medium. To re-create the software program, the pieces on the separate medium were used to re-assemble the software program. When software programs are split in this manner, it is very difficult if not impossible to determine which files of the software program are stored on a particular medium.
Furthermore, the images of such software products do not fit onto a single medium. The prior art does not address splitting or spanning an image of a software program into two or more pieces wherein each piece of the image is equal to or less than the capacity of the medium so that each piece may be copied onto a separate medium. Also, the prior art is not able to re-create the software program from the pieces of the image. Furthermore, there is a need for splitting an image of a software program into two or more pieces wherein each piece of the image is equal to or less than the capacity of the media in such a way that it can be determined which files of the software program are stored on a particular medium.
For these reasons, a system and method for splitting images is desired to address one or more of these and other disadvantages.